The Northern Territory’s police union has renewed calls for the closure of 14 remote police stations – some of them just repurposed shipping containers – which it says have fallen into severe disrepair.
Key points:
- The “cobbled-together” stations were set up during the NT Intervention
- The NTPA says in one station, a prisoner fell through the damaged floor
- The NT and Commonwealth have placed blame on each other over the stations
“Many are beyond economic repair,” said NT Police Association president Paul McCue.
The stations, dotted across remote locations in the Top End and Central Australia, were built and paid for by the federal government during the NT Emergency Response (the Intervention) in 2007.
But since then, Mr McCue said many had been left unstaffed and had “dangerously” deteriorated at the mercy of the Territory’s weather.
“They’re essentially just shipping containers plonked down on a block,” he said.
“With the extreme climate here in the Northern Territory, particularly in the Top End, many of those have disintegrated.
At one of the stations, in the West Daly community of Peppimenarti, Mr McCue said a prisoner held in the station’s cell had “inadvertently put their foot through a floor”.
“[It was] because it had been so severely damaged over time,” he said.
“Clearly that’s not appropriate, not safe, and those sorts of facilities need to be shut down.”
He said the stations needed to either be knocked down or replaced with permanent “bricks and mortar stations”, to give the communities where they were based some certainty about a continued police presence in those areas.
NT and federal governments pass responsibility
Country Liberal Party senator Sam McMahon, the Territory’s sole representative in the Morrison Coalition government, conceded the demountable stations were “cobbled together” and “were only intended to last a few years for the Intervention”.
“They were never fit for purpose right from the start, and they’re certainly not fit for purpose years later,” Ms McMahon said.
“Officers are literally falling through the floors of these places.”
The NT government also conceded “many” of the remote stations were “in need of repair” but put the onus onto the Commonwealth to resolve the issue.
“The federal government cannot walk away from these stations or their commitment to support remote policing,” said Police Minister Nicole Manison.
But Senator McMahon said responsibility for the stations remained with the territory.
“Policing is a responsibility of the Northern Territory government,” she said.
Remote police funding remains unclear
It comes as the NT government waits for certainty about a multi-million-dollar, years-long funding deal for remote policing to be confirmed by the Commonwealth.
The federal government has funded remote policing in the NT since 2007 and has spent more than $280 million on it since then, but that agreement is set to expire in June this year.
So far, no announcements have been made to guarantee the Commonwealth will re-commit to the deal.
Senator McMahon said the remote policing agreement remained “in discussion” but that she was not privy to exactly where the negotiations were sitting.
The NTPA said it was hopeful an announcement would be made during the impending federal election campaign.
